Flip flops and...Zen and the Art of Corey Feldman

It's always heartening to see courageous rebels in troubled countries, such as Myanmar, getting together with the authorities to hash things out. And I mean this seriously.

But I like it even more when they hash things out in flip-flops as in this pic from the NY Times showing an opposition leader and a Burmese official in talks:Surely they can reach some agreement. I mean, they're both wearing 'flops!

In a completely unrelated point I was moved to read that Corey Feldman, that pitiful Lost Boy, has a toddler called Zen. Which is surely asking for trouble, and is also kind of confusing: "Zen, calm down! Zen, get your finger out of your nose!" It will be a titch ironic if young Zenny ends up on Ritalin.

Spider Season

Never mind scary monsters. Crabtown is crawling with black spiders for Halloween. Real ones.

It was extraordinary: in the course of a single day, the whole of Crabtown was covered in a giant cobweb and I am not joking. At first I thought I was seeing things: were those really silky strands floating through the air? Were those really giant webs winking in the sunlight? Or did my sunglasses just need replacing? But no. The spiders have come. They are here. And they are many.

Apparently it is an annual phenomenon in Crabtown. Migrating spiders (who knew?) parachute in (everyone here uses sporting verbs to explain such monstrous things as billowing giant cobwebbery descending on the town)...so they parachute in and then they take over.

And you thought Halloween was scary.

Try getting into your bed every night and seeing spiders skitter off to the side to make room for you. At least three in my bed that I know of every single night. Horrible. Little. Black. Crabtown. Spiders.

Try sleeping after you just did this creepy craft with Crabtot and co. for Crabmommy Volunteers in the Classroom Hour.

I have been assured they don't bite. And Crabhusband thinks it's very gauche and silly to make a fuss about the creatures. But while I know it sounds weird, I just don't like getting into a bed full of spiders. It would be one thing if they were just passing through and just needed a room at the inn for a few nights. But I was recently told by a helpful local that spiders live for many years. Many years!

I picture them with memories, arthritis, regrets.

Has anyone heard of this migrating spidey phenomenon? Got any tips on spider removal? I don't want toxic fumes in my house. But then again, I don't really want to grow old and wise with a spider by my side.

Also: new post today at the bloglet. Talking about Halloween. And Crabtot's doomed costume.

I'll Just Kick Myself

Man, these 3-yr-olds are crabby and crafty, and I don't mean "crafty" in the glue-and-sequins sense of the word.

Crabtot often threatens to— and sometimes actually does—kick and whack her parents. She now knows not to actually kick or smack Mom or Dad for fear of wrath in kind, but she still likes to threaten it. "I'm going to bite you!" is a line we often hear. Or "I'm going to kick you!"

Mostly she says, "I'm going to kick you if I may!" The last three words aren't meant to be a polite utterance. In fact she says them with complete venom. They're a line she got from a book we adore, Maurice Sendak's Pierre. It's this fabulous story about a boy who says, "I don't care." And so eventually he gets eaten by a lion who says, "Then I will eat you if I may" and Pierre says, "I don't care!" It's a terrific book and bloody clever. (For the writers out there, a perfect example of great plotting and of coming back to everything you introduce in a story later on...I'm talking 'bout that "Chekhov's Gun" thing).

Anyhoo, back to Crabtot this morning:

Ctot: "I'm going to kick you, if I may!" [she thinks "if I may" is just the way you make threats, I guess]
Mom: [instead of kicking her...I'm squashing these impulses lately and trying to pretend I'm patient as a preschool teacher] "What a horrible thing to say! That's not nice! We don't kick people. Especially not our mommies."
Ctot: [with a very helpful, contrite look on her face and in a saccharine tone] "Then I'll just kick myself!"
Mom: "No, we're not going to have you kick anybody. And also [here I'm trying to get sort of metaphysical about how thought and deed are both bad] ...and also we don't say that we'll kick people. We don't say 'I'll kick you' to our moms. Because saying it is also a bad thing. So you have to stop saying these things."
Ctot: "Then I will say, 'I will NOT kick you!'"

I never did well in the logic part of the IQ test. Or in that section where they present you with those Escher-esque shapes which you're meant to turn around mentally and figure out which socket they fit into. All of which means I'm not really up to this sort of rhetorical bantering with a sassy little monkey.

And again, a trying afternoon:

Patientmommy vows not to lose it when I see a huge amount of mess in the bathroom: tea-sets, water, all manner of Crabtottery that the child promised to help clean up...

Mom: "Let's sing the Cleanup Song!"
Ctot: [looking suddenly pained] "I'm not feeling well. I've got a little throat."
Mom: "Oh dear, then I guess you're not well enough to go to the playground."
Ctot: [wiggling out of the bathroom and toward her room] "No, I can go to the playground...I just need a few minutes in my room because...I don't feel good."

Conversation repeated twice today; both times "I got a little throat" coincides with the Cleanup Song. Poor thing, I guess she's coming down with something. Like a bad case of craftiness.

Today at the bloglet: bashing the tot cold-med-feds!! Shove off, FDA, I'm hoarding my stash!

I Get Drunk AND I Ply Crabtot with Banned Coldmeds!

Sorry, that title was a tad misleading. YOU WISH you were reading about Badmommy staggering drunk around the house and then giving Crabtot a nice fat dose of Robitussin (because as the New York Times reported in that pesky article about banning kiddie cold meds, "most parents who gave cold medicines to young children were just hoping for a good night’s sleep themselves)."

HOOOO! I am fired about that piece, man, having only just managed to actually read it in its entirety.

But today, I am not so much drunk, nor am I yet plying Crabtot with doses of "Little Colds." What I am doing is previewing 2 pieces to appear at Cookie magazine on my bloglet this week. In the first:

I speak of how much I've started lying since becoming a mother. And how I was afraid to admit to a very innocuous hangover last week when dropping Ctot at her preschool. because I am a wanker and a willy and a Piousmommy sometimes. And that's something I most definitely feel ashamed of.

Second, on Wednesday at the bloglet, I'm tackling the Times and the FDA on that cold med recall. And no, I'm not tossing that bottle of Little Colds that I have in the medicine cabinet. So COME AND GET ME, bloggers and Child Services!!!

As for not posting original content here today, people, I have a cold. And I am presently shooting up a bottle of Nyquil right here into these very crabby veins. However, no matter how ill, drunk, miserable, or high I am, I always have to be on time with my professional bloglet and by golly, so I am. So please do go and enjoy and if you think what I am saying is toxic and dreadful and offensive and wrong, that delights me! And I would be so delighted to hear from you. Just give up your illusions of online privacy, sign into Cookie (I'm trying to encourage them to do away with that) and then beat me to a pulp in your comments.

Also, little tip: if you have a blog and you come to Cookie...while we don't YET link to commenters' blogs, you can leave your blog url in our comments and get some readership from mine...so by all means, speak your mind!

Wishipedia: Don't You Wish You Were in It?

So I know it's pathetic to Google ex-boyfriends and take the time to follow up on their post-me escapades. But what else should I be doing with my time? Looking after children? Cleaning loos? Exercising? Or reading about how the Dalai Lama feels a "special connection" to George Bush ("like a 'reunion' of families!")!

Googling is much more informative. Especially because it seems to me an awful lot of my exes have been getting up to all sorts of things. One is now a crack dealer and a rapist (and I hate to say it, he's still very handsome, even in his mug shot). One has listed himself on a Russian bride website. (He was Eastern European so I'm sure he's looking for a genuine cultural affiliation). And two of them, I am disappointed to say, have merited their very own Wikipedia entries.

And that bothers me.

When you have to see the name of an ex as chosen by the world (or those weird Wikipedia workers) as a designated important person, it just, you know, tweaks your vibe. Especially when the person profiled is a serious jerk (not you, ex-boyfriend...but YOU. Yes, YOU!) And the other is not a complete jerk but bloody hell if he didn't also go on to succeed amazingly well when he left these arms. Which makes him kind of an actual total jerk.

Basically, I'm just jealous. I want my own Wikipedia entry! Or at the very least what they call a "stub" which means a sort of small bookmarky thing that says you are in fact very important even if we don't really know or care to find out much about you right now. Yes, I want to be in Wikipedia. Don't you? I mean, when you make it there you know you've done more than merely Googled your exes and blogged about Ikea washing lines and bad baby names all the livelong day, eh? All of which leads me to my newest brainwave:

Wishipedia: An Encyclopedia of Important Unknown People in the World

Officially, an invitation for you, dear readers of Crabmommy. Join me in writing your own bio about yourself and the things you have got up to. And if you haven't got up to very much yet, then MAKE IT UP. I give you permission. This is WISHipedia, after all, where wishful thinking rules!

Write me that pithy version of your life story (or invented life, or life you hope one day to get around to living), touching upon all highlights both public and personal.

Then let's put them up on a website called Wishipedia... and maybe others will come and do the same. And then if each of these wishful-thinkers pays me a dollar I will become rich, meriting me a Wikipedia write-up for real. Or at the very least, a stub! I mean, there must be at least one million losers out there who, like me, are waiting for someone to write them into Wikipedia YET ARE NOT DOING ANYTHING THAT MERITS A WIKIPEDIA ENTRY.

If you're one of us, do join!

Wishipedia: coming to a blog near you. I await your stories at crabmommy at gmail dot com. And I will write my own, oh yes indeedy I will. Be prepared, ex-boyfriends, because one day you'll be Googling me...and seeing just how much I prospered and made genius cultural contributions since we parted ways.

Flipping bloody wankers.

You Named Your Baby....WHAT?

OK, so nobody needs Crabmommy to wax long about stupid baby names. Everyone's nattered on about this abundantly of late, including NPR and the NYTimes, who reported on babies called 4Real and the @ sign and so forth.

But just a few cents. Maybe not two cents. Just one cent, then.

In briefly perusing a piece about Jerry Seinfeld's wife making healthy tot snacks or some drivel (like she doesn't have a chef! [and if she doesn't she's an IDIOT]), I noticed something that had passed me by:

The Seinfelds have a child named Shepherd. No, not a dog, a child.

There's also been some chitchattery about how weird African names can be, and I'm sure you've all heard by now about how black Zimbabweans, for example, take names like Smile and Godknows. But as someone born and raised in South Africa, these names somewhat sound normal. I had a nanny as a kid and her name was Princess. When we moved, Princess was replaced by Baby. My grandparents had a dude who mowed the lawn called Attention. Someone had a childhood friend called Paraffin. The real joke, though, is on us whites who with all of our skewered education and riches, couldn't quite manage to say any African names, necessitating this "white" name nonsense.

Anyhoo. I'm sure Brad and Angelina will put us all straight by naming their next kid Harare or Nxobololo, but in the meantime, I'm just glad Jessica Seinfeld is making sure that Shepherd eats his veggies! What a good boy Shepherd!

Here, Shepherd.
Down, Shepherd.

Honestly. Just. Too. Ridiculous.

Sorry to plug again, but in order to keep my job, I plug the Cookiemag bloglet: this week's post is Can Everybody Please Stop Swimming? Part 2. (Again, a "bugger off with your infant swimming lessons" piece from Crabmommy.)

For an extra-big laugh: Suburban Turmoil is having a Worst Baby Name Ever contest and boy are there some kickers out there. Manhattyn is my absolute favorite worst name ever. I mean, the Y" in the last syllable—TOO. MUCH. It gives me joy.

Put Your Toddler in that Cage!

Linklove is just another way of saying you're lazy.
I'm lazy. But Redsy isn't. Check out her tot hut for secure sleeping.

Silly Stuff: Pessimistic Fortune Cookies..at last!

A Crabmommy has to love and share this piece, on one Wonton Food, which is distributing grim cookie fortunes in restaurants as we speak. No more "this is your lucky day." Now the fortune cookie forecasts gloom.

Spread the negativity, I say! Reality bites.

Have a good week. Because the weekend, it's not going to be good. Something embarrassing is going to happen to you...(Fortunes of Crabmommy, coming soon to a blog near you).

p.s. New post on Wednesday at the bloglet. I'm tackling toddler swim lessons. Again. And if you didn't see my extraordinary Hello Kitty tot bday cupcakes, then shame on you. The one time when Crabmommy rises to the occasion. Go and pay homage, right now, right here.

OK, Enough About The Bloody Birthday Already!

All,
I am waylaid by a sake-inflected hangover today. It is quite rare for me to go out to dinner and quite rare for me to imbibe delicious drinks from the Orient (just kidding, guys!!! Gabe, keep your pants on!). Quite rare for me to imbibe delicious drinks from Japan. If I could have my way I would drown in a vat of sake and sushi once weekly. Instead, the annual Crabparents' night out happens, well, sort of annually. And it was delicious. And it was great. And I felt like a grownup. But one must watch the sake at high altitude. Especially when one has never been a very good drinker. Or much of a drinker at all.

ANYWAY

This means I'm a bit too foggy to properly blog. But if you want to know allllll about Crabtot's third birthday and see photographs of my insanely craftastic Hello Kitty cupcakes, as well as read a monologue about how the Crapmommy suddenly metamorphosed into Nigella Bloody Lawson the Domestic Goddess for Crabtot's third birthday, please go to my Cookie gig, the bloglet, right now.

BUT AFTER YOU'VE READ IT

Do not think I have changed. Just because I can make a mean cupcake doesn't mean I'm not still a meanmommy. Believe me, I whined solidly up to and including the party and after. And while I'm feeling a bit smug about the popsicle-stick puppet show I performed behind the armchair (see the bloglet), worry not: I remain affectionately,

Your crabby, sour, lazy (mostly), and irritated (and hungover) friend,
Crabmommy

Why Three is Better Than Two

Crabmommy to Crabtot: "What are you going to be when you grow up? An architect like your dad?"
Crabtot: "No. I'm going to do construction."

Finally some common sense in the family!

Dollar Store Flowerpot Sculpture, R.I.P.

Chums,

You're waiting with bated breath to hear reports of Crabtot's third birthday party this past weekend. But I'm still recovering and hence can't quite bring myself to post yet. Maybe by the time she turns four. Actually, in truth it all went rather well. And as you know, I don't like to post about the rare good times one has a parent. It just 'aint good reading!

However, I can and must post about what happened to the Dollar store prize from the now-famous Dollar store contest we held here at Crabmommy. Remember the prize? It was won by Char who submitted the marvelous power tie that cinched her spot at #1. It was patterned in the manner of the American flag and had musical powers too.

Char won a most attractive sculpture that I found at my local DS (the one that sells crucifixion stickers and dried fruit labeled "mango-flavored pineapple"). The sculpture had the following attributes:

1. it was shaped rather like a piggy bank but had no coin slot
2. it depicted a smiling flower sporting either a bar of soap or what might be a sign saying "H20." Hard to tell. That's the beauty of it.
3. It was very, very ugly.
4. Note the use of the past tense. It is explained below:

This is no lie: I went to wrap the sculpture last week to send it to Char and dropped it. By accident. I repeat: I am not lying to you. It broke. So I immediately wrote to Char and told her that, perhaps, she was in luck, for her prize in fact broke before it ever reached her mantelpiece. Luckily I photographed it before it died. So Char, if you still want it, I can likely find a replacement.

Here's the original, at long last! People, you have been clamoring for it. Feast your eyes:
The question of the day: is that a bar of soap, or a sign begging for water?

Char, I am truly sorry I destroyed this. If you want, I can find you another—that is, if they haven't already been bought up by Crabtown's discerning residents. Or as an alternative first prize, you can win the right to NOT have one of these mailed to you by Crabmommy.

Haiku for a Weird Flowerpot

Sculpture, R.I.P.
We loved you so and did not
Mean to let you go

And this concludes our Dollar store-related posts. It was fun. But I think we're all a little relieved that it is finished.

Oh, and today at the bloglet, I'm mocking Dr. Sears.